Fast-paced Village President Setting His Political Clock

August 28, 1985|By Richard Brunelli.

James Ryan is in a hurry. Ask him a tangential question, and he`ll bump you back in place. Ask the four-term village president of Arlington Heights about his future, and you`ll hear time quickly ticking in his voice, like a metronome setting the pace.

``Several people have approached me to consider a run for attorney general,`` the 50-year-old Republican says. ``I think it`s definitely do-able with the record that has been accomplished here. And I`m very proud of it.``

Since 1967, Ryan has been busy enhancing the image of Arlington Heights. He says he has based his leadership of one of the more established suburbs around two words. ``Honest government,`` he says quickly.

In 1977, he says, Arlington Heights was named the most graft-free community in the country. Frank Charlton, the assistant village manager, explains that the title was bestowed on Arlington Heights by a professor from the University of Chicago who studied municipal ethics in America.

Ryan also says that his administration has stayed in the vanguard of environmental issues. In 1971, Ryan instituted the Environmental Control Commission in Arlington Heights. One of the commissioner`s main concerns, he says, is noise from air traffic to and from O`Hare International Airport.

``Most of the suburbs weren`t involved with that type of thing when we started it,`` Ryan says. ``We got very involved and have recently recommended to the Federal Aviation Administration that they can develop flight paths that don`t go over Arlington Heights.``

But Charlton is unsure whether the commission`s suggestions would change the two flight paths that operate over the southern part of Arlington Heights. ``I think the recommendations may have some impact,`` he says. ``But I think (the recommendations) are more political than actual. It gets to the ears of the people who run the airport. They are sensitive to complaints, and Mayor Ryan has been in the forefront of complaints.``

Between complaints against noise pollution, however, Ryan has found time to establish concrete gains for the community.

Two of his favorite projects are the Park Place Senior Center, 306 W. Park Pl., and the Arlington Heights Youth Center, 402 N. Vail Ave.

Park Place, Ryan says, grew out of the suggestion of the Senior Citizens Commission of Arlington Heights. The center, which once housed an elementary school, was set up in 1972. The Arlington Heights Youth Center is in a former residential home that was purchased by the village in 1979.

``We recognized the needs that youths and senior citizens have,`` he says.

In a further attempt to improve the quality of life in Arlington Heights` downtown area, Ryan says, work has begun on a 15-story residential complex.

``The downtown area used to be decadent,`` he says. ``We brought in business and industry, which helps to get other things going.``

The new complex, which is at the corner of Sigwalt Street and Vail Avenue and is to be called Dunton Place, is scheduled to be completed sometime next year.

Ryan, who grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., is not a child of Illinois politics. In 1956, he received a bachelor`s degree in engineering at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Three years later, he was graduated from the University of Wisconsin`s School of Law. Finally, after two years at the Johnson School of Business Administration in Milwaukee, he came to Illinois.

While working as an attorney for a company in Chicago in 1965, Ryan says, he picked Arlington Heights as the community he could settle into.

``I looked at all the suburban communities,`` he says. ``And I fell in love with Arlington Heights.``

From 1965 to January of this year, Ryan practiced law with various firms in Chicago. In January he opened his own firm, Ryan and Moore Ltd., in Arlington Heights. ``The commuting drove me nuts,`` he says.

Ryan`s political board began to spring inauspiciously when he was appointed to the Arlington Heights Homeowners` Association Planning Commission in 1967. That commission, he says, oversees realty developments and zoning ordinances in the village.

In 1970, Ryan was appointed to fill a vacancy on the village board of trustees. In 1975, he was named to fill another vacancy; this time it was as interim mayor of Arlington Heights.

Later in 1975, Ryan was officially elected to the post. In the next three mayoral elections--in 1977, 1981 and April of 1985--Ryan had little trouble maintaining his seat. In April, he says, he ran unopposed.

``We`ve established a pretty good track record,`` he says with no false modesty.